A new paper argues that the decline of both the labor and capital shares, as well as the decline in low-skilled wages and other economic trends, have been aided by a significant increase in markups and market power.

India's economy now seems to move like a vast oil slick on the global sea, far too broad, far too hard to grasp, to be contained or even shaped by any one leader sitting in Delhi For two decades now, I have been leading a band of journalists on annual trips to follow state and national elections acr

The finance ministry’s Economic Survey used Big Data for policy analysis in the first volume, while the second volume used machine learning to extract information from satellite images. Photo: Bloomberg The view from above as your plane lands in Mumbai during the monsoon months is a revelation.

CAMBRIDGE – Few economies pose as big a paradox as Mexico’s. Emerging from a series of macroeconomic crises in the mid-1990s, Mexico undertook bold reforms that should have put it on track for rapid economic growth.

The Scramble for Africa has contributed to economic, social, and political underdevelopment by spurring ethnic-tainted civil conflict and discrimination and by shaping the ethnic composition, size, shape and landlocked status of the newly independent states.

The shamelessness was breathtaking. You may have noticed that we rolled out some cameras across our apps recently. That was Act One. Photos and videos are becoming more central to how we share than text. So the camera needs to be more central than the text box in all of our apps.

SINCE the publication of "Capital in the Twenty-First Century", Thomas Piketty has won many plaudits for his work on inequality. The book has so far sold more than 1.5m copies. Its arguments have been praised by Nobel-prize winners and politicians alike.

I have long had a "thinking like an economist" lecture in the can. But I very rarely give it. It seems to me that it is important stuff—that people really should know it before they begin studying economics, because it would make studying economics much easier.

It can be very confusing to know that you won’t find a decent job, pay off student loans or put in a down payment on a house in the next few years — even though you may have graduated from a top-tier university or secured glowing references from all those unpaid internships that got you to w

By John T. Harvey We are experiencing deep economic problems and it is the fault of the economics discipline. Their macro theories suck. But, there is no mechanism forcing it to alter its models when they don’t appear to work.

The 62 richest people in the world own as much wealth as half of humanity. Such extreme wealth conjures images of both fat cats and deserving entrepreneurs. So where did so much money come from? It turns out, three-fourths of extreme wealth in the US falls on the fat cat side.

From the man who bought you "the shortest economic textbook in the world"; and "13 things Economists won't tell you", here is Ha-Joon Chang's ultimate pocket guide to the differences (and similarities) between all the economic schools of thought.

The World Economics Association recently interviewed me on the state of economics, inquiring about my views on pluralism in the profession. You can find the result on the WEA's newsletter here (the interview starts on page 9). I reproduce it below. 1.

Our relationship to money changes as we get older. So do the mistakes that we make with it. Every new stage of life brings new financial strategies we need to follow. And at every stage we find new ways not to follow those strategies, costing ourselves money and jeopardizing our security.

At the outset of the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes penned a remarkable economic prognostication: that despite the ominous storm that was then enfolding the world, mankind was in fact on the brink of solving “the economic problem” — that is, the quest for daily subsistence.

A few days ago, the value of all the bitcoins in the world blew past $1 billion for the first time ever. That’s an impressive achievement, for a purely virtual currency backed by no central bank or other authority.

What do the economists at the International Monetary Fund see when they look at the U.S.? An economy in the midst of a long expansion ("its third longest expansion since 1850"), with "persistently strong" job growth, "subdued" inflation and something close to "full employment." But also this:

You’ve probably heard the news that the celebrated post-WW II beating heart of America known as the middle class has gone from “burdened,” to “squeezed” to “dying.” But you might have heard less about what exactly is emerging in its place.

Many of us know we need to rethink economics, but Kate Raworth actually did it. Envisioning the economy as a doughnut, two boundaries become clear. If we fall into the doughnut’s middle hole, human needs fail to be met. If we drop off of the outer edge, life is unsustainable.

Figure 2 summarises our key results. Good pilots – those whose average monthly victory score put them in the top 20% of the distribution – on average improved their victory score by 50%, from less than two to more than three a month, when the successes of their former peers were advertised.

By J. W. Mason I’ve felt for a while that most critiques of economics miss the mark. They start from the premise that economics is a systematic effort to understand the concrete social phenomena we call “the economy,” an effort whose methods unfortunately are unsound.

It is time to ditch the belief that economies obey rigid mechanical rules, which has widened inequality and polluted our planet. Economics is evolving It is time to ditch the belief that economies obey rigid mechanical rules, which has widened inequality and polluted our planet.

ONE morning, an economist went to buy a shirt. The one he chose was a marvel of global production. It was made in Malaysia using German machines. The cloth was woven from Indian cotton grown from seeds developed in America. The collar lining came from Brazil; the artificial fibre from Portugal.

American economist Hyman Minsky, who died in 1996, grew up during the Great Depression, an event which shaped his views and set him on a crusade to explain how it happened and how a repeat could be prevented, writes Duncan Weldon.

SUPPOSE that one day the government of a large and fast-growing economy became convinced that its highest priority was to purge the country of black-economy millionaires hoarding piles of illicit cash.

Mainstream economics is terrible at understanding the reality of human behaviour. Now, even the respected thinker Paul Romer is calling for change It’s 26 years since Paul Romer shook the discipline of economics with a single research paper.

The financial collapse of 2007/08 and the subsequent deep recession and sluggish recovery have left huge scars on the global economy. In the UK, the government is grappling with an unprecedented budget deficit and unemployment is over 1 million higher than it was before the recession.

Quality clothes last longer for the money you spend, they’re more comfortable, and they make you look and feel pretty good while you wear them. Best of all, you can find quality anywhere. It comes down to buying less mediocre stuff and using that money on a few nice things that last forever.

Most people are in the pursuit of happiness. There are economists who think happiness is the best indicator of the health of a society. We know that money can make you happier, though after your basic needs are met, it doesn’t make you that much happier.

IN THE second quarter of this year the German economy shrank by 0.2%. Economists expect it to contract again in the third quarter, meaning that the economy will technically be in recession. Some believe that the economy will not grow until the middle of next year.

THE predictions sounded like promises: in the future, working hours would be short and vacations long. “Our grandchildren”, reckoned John Maynard Keynes in 1930, would work around “three hours a day”—and probably only by choice.

IT WAS in 1942 that Joseph Schumpeter published his only bestseller, “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”. The book was popular for good reason. It was a tour de force of economics, history and sociology. It coined memorable phrases such as “creative destruction”.

The digitization of our economy will bring with it a new generation of radical economic ideologies, of which Bitcoin is arguably the first. For those with assets, technological savvy, and a sense of adventure, the state is the enemy and a cryptographic currency is the solution.

This week “The Economist explains” is given over to economics. For each of six days until Saturday this blog will publish a short explainer on a seminal idea. DOES trade hurt wages? Or, more precisely, do imports from low-wage economies hurt workers in high-wage ones? Many people assume so.

In fact, anyone who has spent some time thinking about the issue sees its complexity. With the collapse of the Senate health care bills this week, the president has certainly been reminded of it. But Mr.

One central fact about the global economy lurks just beneath the year’s remarkable headlines: Economic growth in advanced nations has been weaker for longer than it has been in the lifetime of most people on earth.

IN 1924 John Maynard Keynes, who invented macroeconomics, used a biographical essay about his mentor Alfred Marshall to muse on the qualities of a good economist. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words.

The fall of Juicero isn’t just entertaining tech industry stupidity – it’s the sign of a country refusing to break new ground If you’ve used the internet at any point in the past few weeks, you’ve probably heard of Juicero. Juicero is a San Francisco-based company that sells a $400 juicer.

More than 151 million Americans count themselves employed, a number that has risen sharply in the last few years. The question is this: What are they doing all day? Because whatever it is, it barely seems to be registering in economic output. The number of hours Americans worked rose 1.

The creator of The Wire, David Simon, delivered an impromptu speech about the divide between rich and poor in America at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney, and how capitalism has lost sight of its social compact. This is an edited extract • Lanre Bakare: Go home, David Simon.

LAST night 40,000 people rented accommodation from a service that offers 250,000 rooms in 30,000 cities in 192 countries. They chose their rooms and paid for everything online. But their beds were provided by private individuals, rather than a hotel chain.

HERBIE, a Volkswagen Beetle with a mind of its own in a series of Disney films launched in the 1960s, had its share of misadventures. But things had a way of ending up happily for both the car and its passengers.

If the goal of the economy is to provide decent-paying work for everyone, that economy clearly isn’t doing a good job at the moment. Real wages for most Americans haven’t increased in 40 years. Real unemployment–which includes the “under-employed”–is above 10%.

From time to time, the Singularity Hub editorial team unearths a gem from the archives and wants to share it all over again. It’s usually a piece that was popular back then and we think is still relevant now. This is one of those articles. It was originally published . We hope you enjoy it!

Without us noticing, we are entering the postcapitalist era. At the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy. The old ways will take a long while to disappear, but it’s time to be utopian

In February, after almost two years worth of six-hour workdays, nurses at the Svartedalens elderly care facility in Gothenburg, Sweden went back to eight hour shifts—despite recently published research showing the benefits of the shortened workdays.

Paul Romer says he really hadn’t planned to trash macroeconomics as a math-obsessed pseudoscience. Or infuriate countless colleagues. It just sort of happened. His intention actually had been to write a paper that would celebrate advances in the understanding of what drives economic growth.

AT THE height of the euro crisis, with government-bond yields soaring in several southern European countries and defaults looming, the European Central Bank and the healthier members of the currency club fended off disaster by offering bail-outs.

FROM late January, Donald Trump will have all the authority of the American executive, and the support of a unified Republican Congress, behind him. He will, therefore, be in a position to deliver profound and lasting change.

How and why did the modern world and its unprecedented prosperity begin? Learned tomes by historians, economists, political scientists and other scholars fill many bookshelves with explanations of how and why the process of modern economic growth or ‘the Great Enrichment’ exploded in wester

AMERICA has a debt ceiling. It’s a statutory limit on how much debt the federal government can issue. For most of its existence (the ceiling will turn 100 next year) Congress has simply voted to raise the limit when borrowing threatens to hit it.

It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession.

It is the economics book that took the world by storm. Capital in the Twenty-First Century, written by the French economist Thomas Piketty, was published in French in 2013 and in English in March 2014.

In 1990, Susan Orlean published a book called Saturday Night, in which she set out to document how Americans spend their weekly reprieve from work. “Saturday night,” she wrote, “is when you want to do what you want to do and not what you have to do.

There is an economic mystery I’ve been struggling to understand for quite some time, and I’m not the only one who’s confused: Among financial experts, it is often referred to as a conundrum, a paradox, a puzzle. The mystery is as follows: Collectively, American businesses currently have $1.

CHINA was right to turn on the credit taps to prop up growth after the global financial crisis. It was wrong not to turn them off again. The country’s debt has increased just as quickly over the past two years as in the two years after the 2008 crunch.

David Graeber is an American anthropologist who teaches at the London School of Economics. He is the author of the classic “Debt: The First Five Thousand Years” and played an important role in the launching of Occupy Wall Street.